Computer systems may be found in the workplace, at home, or at school. Computer systems may include computing and data storage systems to process and store data. Many organizations and business entities utilizing a computing system are governed by corporate or governmental compliance regulations. These entities are concerned, for example, with enforcement of corporate or governmental rules, regulations, and/or policies for protection of confidential data, protection of data that contains user phrases and numeric patterns, and compliance with governmental regulations. Some of the governmental regulations that are related to security and risk management include, but are not limited to, GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) Regulations.
Validation of computing configurations and compliance at the time of activation or service is part of a management process and governance for compliance with the various governmental or corporate regulations. Most information technology (IT) organizations work to comply with these compliance regulations to ensure that security risks, governance controls and vulnerabilities are proactively managed through the lifecycle of the service provided by a computing system. In existing approaches, the validation processes are carried out through manual steps that are time consuming and error prone. This lengthy process is particularly troublesome when providing managed virtual computing services to enterprise users.